Peer-to-peer visit of senior Tunisian officials to Switzerland: Exchange on best practices in multilingual legal drafting & the training of jurilinguists

A peer-to-peer study visit of senior Tunisian delegates was organised in the framework of the GfD Working Group IV on Regulatory Reform to Switzerland from 5-7 November 2006. This mission is part of a regional capacity-building project for jurilinguists and multilingual legal drafters in the Middle East and North Africa.

At a Capacity-Building Seminar on Regulatory Reform held in November 2005 in Tunisia OECD and Arab participants realised the need to strengthen Arab legal drafters’ and jurilinguists’ capacity to improve legal clarity and regulatory quality when they draft texts in Arabic, French and English. The topic of multilingual legal drafting has thus been highlighted as a priority by Arab countries in the course of the GfD Initiative. Tunisia, as chair of the GfD Working Group IV, has taken this priority into account, noting the creation of a regional professional Masters Course at the Tunis El Manar University to train multilingual legal drafters as a key target in its Country Action Plan for Public Sector Modernisation in the field of regulatory reform.

This mission to Switzerland gave Tunisian experts the opportunity to profit from the Swiss rich experience of legal drafting in a multilingual state structure, learn from their practices and gain practical experience. The Swiss Initiative to welcome this Tunisian delegation made an important contribution to the establishment of the regional professional Masters Course at the Tunis El Manar University.